Australia Health Workforce Planning

The assignment requires students to analyze the challenges faced by the Australian Health Department in meeting the growing healthcare demand due to the rapid increase in population. It involves reviewing research materials on Australia Nursing Workforce planning, identifying key recommendations, and discussing their applicability in the near future to maintain the required number of nurses.

Running head: BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT 1
Bachelor Nursing Assignment
Student’s name
Lecturer’s name
Institute of affiliation
Date

BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT 2
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...........................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
DISCUSSIONS................................................................................................................................4
Updated nursing workforce profile in Australia (2009, 2012, 2015)...........................................4
Outcomes of addition of more recent materials to the workforce................................................6
The status of the nursing workforce.............................................................................................7
The nursing workforce geographic distribution...........................................................................8
Recommendations in the nursing workforce sustainability report 2014......................................8
Relevance of the recommendations in 2018.............................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Workforce planning report
Australia is a country and continent surrounded by the Indian and the Pacific Ocean. Its
rapid population growth has created a high demand for healthcare. The high population is a big
challenge to the government in ensuring efficient provision of healthcare. Australian has the
following different bodies that help in registration of health professionals.
Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) that help in the registration of health
professionals nationally, National Health Workforce Data Set (NHWD) – an inclusion of the data
acquired from registration process annually and the data from the nursing workforce report.
Health Workforce Australia (HWA) addresses the challenges faced by the nursing workforce.
Later, it was replaced with Future Health Workforce- nurses (AFHW). All these bodies have
different research activities on the Nursing Workforce Australia and publications on the same.
All these publications, reports and tools were put in the Australia Department of Health website
for everybody to access them.

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Introduction
The department of health in Australia is a body that maintains the health care system of
the country. The department has established other bodies within its operation to handle other
different needs. This report will give a summary of findings on the Australia Nursing Workforce.
First, the report will highlight on the nursing workforce profile from the year 2009 to
2015. Then it will address the challenges that are being faced by the health care system in
Australia and the reforms that have been made. It will also identify the different sectors covered
by the health care system. Finally, it will address the recommendations reports on the Nursing
workforce Australia specifically the Nursing Workforce Sustainability Report 2014 and the
validity of these recommendations in 2018. In addition to that, the report will also briefly discuss
the measures put in place to improve the efficiency of the nursing workforce and the applicable
recommendations that have been proposed in the research materials (Mason,2013).
Discussion
Updated nursing workforce profile in Australia (2009, 2012, and 2015) has been obtained
from the Australia Nursing Workforce Sustainability report 2014. The high rise of aged
population in Australia has become a major concern to the government for provision of sufficient
health care. There has been a progressive increase in the number of nurses being enrolled,
employed and those becoming nurse practitioners. Research has been done and reports are
written to support this. The tables below represent the number of nurses in Australia (Crittenden
et al 2014).

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Table 1a: Number employed Registered Nurses
Workforce characteristics 2009 2012 2015
FTE nurses 198,924 212,659 256,034
FTE per 100,000 population 905.9 936.4 958
Male proportion (%) 8.9 9.2 10.9
Average age (years) 44.9 46 44.1
Proportion aged 50+ (%) - 45.5 37.3
Source: AIHW
Data for the employed nurses include the citizens with dual citizenship
Full-time equivalent (FTE) working an average of 38 hours per week (2009, 2012) and 33.5
hours per week (2015).
Table 1b: Number of employed Enrolled Nurses
Workforce characteristics 2009 2012 2015
FTE nurses 242,521 255,174 51,070
FTE per 100,000 population 1,104.10 1,123.60 1,138
Male proportion (%) 9.6 10.2 9.4
Average age (years) 44.3 44.6 46.3
Proportion aged 50+ (%) 36.3 39.1 47.7

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Source: AIHW
The data defines as a number of hours either a midwifery or nurses who worked within the week.
Full-time equivalent (FTE) working an average of 38 hours per week (2009, 2012) and 33.5
hours per week (2015).
Table 1c: Number of all employed nurses
Workforce characteristics 2009 2012 2015
FTE nurses 43,614 42,467 307,104
FTE per 100,000 population 198.2 187 179
Male proportion (%) 9.8 10.4 10.7
Average age (years) 44.2 44.3 44.4
Proportion aged 50+ (%) - 37.7 39
Source: AIHW
The employed midwifery or a nurse who worked as midwives at all hours.
Full-time equivalent (FTE) working an average of 38 hours per week (2009, 2012) and 33.5
hours per week (2015).
There are many developments after the addition of the more recent materials into
the health care system of Australia. The following improvements led to the development of the
nursing workforce. The e-health system development made it easy for the nurses to keep records
efficiently and retrieving the bundles that contained patients’ information (Addicott et al 2015).

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It encouraged the system to retain nurses who were within the system so as to increase their
numbers hence meet the healthcare demand.
Giving links to the health department website. This was very useful to those who are
interested in information concerning the nursing workforce Australia. This has made it possible
for the public to access information concerning health care. These links are even reports that
have more information concerning the researchers who have written reports concerning the
nursing workforce Australia (Westra et al 2015).
It also contributed to the upgrade of education. This was achieved through study
scholarships especially at the undergraduate level where many students ended up registering for
the nursing course. This increased the number of students in the nursing profession
(Hodges,2018). These scholarships were not only for the undergraduate. Higher level study
scholarships were given. This generally improved the education level of the nurses.
There was also educative training for the nurses and even the support staff. This was
done to enhance the productivity of the nurses, their working efficiency, and their governance
and communication framework to make them more innovative at work. All these put in place;
the characteristic of the nursing workforce has greatly changed. This is evident from the tables in
the first section of this report showing the increasing number of nurses being employed with time
(Moodie et al 2016).
In accordance with the AFHW (Australia Future Health Workforce) - Nurses report, the
current position of the nurse workforce is stable. There has been a progressive increase in the
number of registered employed nurses. The strategies that had been put in place to ensure
retention of nurses were bearing results. Nevertheless, the leadership training and education

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programs that had been put in place have borne fruits hence enhancing the capacity building
within the workforce while encouraging innovations. This made the current status of the nursing
workforce manageable but still needs more improvement to increase its capacity (Gupta, &
Wilson, 2017).
There has been a difference in allocation of nurses in the different sectors that are
governed by the healthcare department. The ageing people sector was the most demanding
because of the increasing number of the ageing group in the country. Therefore, the future status
of the nursing workforce will be dictated by the rapid demand for health care due to the
increasing population. This calls for a rapid measure to ensure that the nursing workforce will be
able to balance the demand of the country's population healthcare system. All the different
sectors in the health department have got different needs that have to be met. Hence, the number
of nurses in each sector differs because of their differences in service demand (Squires et al
2017)
Before the developments started taking place, there was an uneven geographic
distribution of the nurses around the region. Thanks to the development of the e-health system
which has made it possible for a proper documentation procedure. This has made it possible for
proper allocation of health administrators both in the capital and in the remote areas of Australia.
Though, in the near future, it could be a problem since most of the aged populations tend to be
located in the countryside. This raises an alarm for more nurses hence the stability of the
workforce. With all these reforms, it is evident that there is the improved distribution of nurses
across the state even though it is not satisfactory. Some states still need more nurses to be able to
meet the population's demand (Rees et al 2018).

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Following are the recommendations in the nursing workforce sustainability report
2014 that led to the increase in the number of nurses.
Workplace productivity improvement
It was the best way for creating room for innovations and rewarding innovators within the
nursing workforce. It gave the nurses a wider room for creative thinking because they know that
at the end of it all they will be rewarded. In addition to that, it ensured that each nurse was taking
their responsibility diligently (Terry et al 2018).
Capacity building through leadership training programs
This was an essential tool in encouraging the nurse managers to be innovative leaders and
good decision makers through improved evidence-base.
Retention of nurses
This step was going to ensure a stable workforce was created to meet the rapid demand of
the health care system. The nurses who were already in the system were being retained so that
they retire at a later age (Valeva, et al 2017). Despite that, there was still demand for nurses. This
opened up more employment for fresh graduate nurses while balancing the country's demand and
supply of the nursing workforce.
The relevance of the recommendations in 2018
With respect to the report, I have read and the research references, the
recommendations above are relevant in many ways in the future success of the nursing
workforce. There is still need for more nurses in the Australia nursing workforce because of the
rapid increase in population. Therefore, the recommendations that were earlier put in place could

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still be applicable in the near future to maintain the number of nurses required to meet the
country's health care demand (Holland et al 2018).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Australia Health Department should put in more efforts to ensure that
it meets the growing healthcare demand of its population. This will be achieved by implementing
the recommendations that have been suggested in the different research materials concerning the
Australia Nursing Workforce.

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References
Mason, J. (2013). Review of Australian government health workforce programs.
Crettenden, I. F., McCarty, M. V., Fenech, B. J., Heywood, T., Taitz, M. C., & Tudman, S.
(2014). How evidence-based workforce planning in Australia is informing policy
development in the retention and distribution of the health workforce. Human resources
for health, 12(1), 7.
Addicott, R., Maguire, D., Honeyman, M., & Jabbal, J. (2015). Workforce planning in the NHS. King's
Fund.
Westra, B. L., Latimer, G. E., Matney, S. A., Park, J. I., Sensmeier, J., Simpson, R. L., ... & Delaney, C.
W. (2015). A national action plan for sharable and comparable nursing data to support practice
and translational research for transforming health care. Journal of the American Medical
Informatics Association, 22(3), 600-607.
Moodie, A. R., Tolhurst, P., & Martin, J. (2016). Australia’s health: being accountable for prevention.
Med J Aust, 204(6), 223-5.
Gupta, D., Li, F., & Wilson, N. (2017). Extraboard-driver workforce planning for bus transit operations.
Squires, A., Jylhä, V., Jun, J., Ensio, A., & Kinnunen, J. (2017). A scoping review of nursing workforce
planning and forecasting research. Journal of nursing management, 25(8), 587-596.
Valeva, S., Hewitt, M., Thomas, B. W., & Brown, K. G. (2017). Balancing flexibility and inventory in
workforce planning with learning. International Journal of Production Economics, 183, 194-
207.
Hodges, B. D. (2018). Learning from Dorothy Vaughan: artificial intelligence and the health
professions. Medical education, 52(1), 11-13.

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Holland, P. J., Tham, T. L., & Gill, F. J. (2018). What nurses and midwives want: Findings from the
national survey on workplace climate and well‐being. International journal of nursing practice.
Rees, G. H., Crampton, P., Gauld, R., & MacDonell, S. (2018). Rethinking health workforce planning:
Capturing health system social and power interactions through actor analysis. Futures.
Terry, D., Selopal, N., Huynh, C., & Hughes, E. (2018). Examining the emerging roles for pharmacists
as part of the urgent, acute and emergency care workforce. Stroke, 13, 57.